The Versatile Man: The Life and Times of Don Ross, Kaytetye Stockman

Front Cover
Born in Barrow Creek, Australia, north of Alice Springs, to an Aboriginal mother and a white father, Don Ross grew up at Neutral Junction station between two worlds: the white settler world of his grandfather and other station owners, and the Aboriginal Kaytetye world of his mother's family. He knew both cultures and spoke both languages, and experienced the uneasy tension of living between the two. Don was an eager eight-year-old when he first started to work in the stock camps on his grandfather's cattle station in the early 1920s. In a series of yarns, he delights in recalling the many colorful characters who crossed his path, and recollects the arduous and often dangerous life of a stockman. The Versatile Man paints a picture of a bygone era of pastoral industry development and technological change in a frontier world where only the strong, the capable, the resourceful, and the adaptable survived.

From inside the book

Contents

Old Grandfather George Hayes
37
Trouble all right
63
Left the mothers crying
71
Copyright

8 other sections not shown

Common terms and phrases

About the author (2007)

Terry Whitebeach is a Tasmanian writer, oral historian and community artist with a long-standing interest and involvement in collaborative and cross-cultural life writing. Her published work includes two collections of poety, "Bird Dream," Four New Poets, Penguin Books 1993 and All the Shamans Work in Safeway: Poems for Young Adults, Ginninderra Press 2006, two novels for young adults, Watersky, Fremantle Arts Centre Press 1997, and Bantam, co-authored with her son, Michael Brown, FACP 2002, and three radio plays for ABC's Airplay. She has taught creative writing and facilitated collaborative and cross-cultural writing projects for more than two decades, collating and editing a number of anthologies of community writing. She has an MA in English from Edith Cowan University and a PhD in history/biography from Charles Darwin University. During the seven years she lived in the Northern Territory, she was employed by two independent Indigenout education providers - the Institute for Aboriginal Development and Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education - as a tutor, lecturer and oral historian. From 1999 to 2003 she coordinated Batchelor Institute's inaugural creative writing program in Alice Springs. She continues her involvement with Indigenous writers and writing in Central Australia. The Versatile Man is her latest co-authored work; the next will be a biography of senior Anmatyerr woman, Rosalie Kunoth Monks. Terry Whitebeach is a Tasmanian writer, oral historian and community artist with a long-standing interest and involvement in collaborative and cross-cultural life writing. Her published work includes two collections of poety, "Bird Dream", Four New Poets, Penguin Books 1993 and All the Shamans Work in Safeway: Poems for Young Adults, Ginninderra Press 2006, two novels for young adults, Watersky, Fremantle Arts Centre Press 1997, and Bantam, co-authored with her son, Michael Brown, FACP 2002, and three radio plays for ABC's Airplay. She has taught creative writing and facilitated collaborative and cross-cultural writing projects for more than two decades, collating and editing a number of anthologies of community writing. She has an MA in English from Edith Cowan University and a PhD in history/biography from Charles Darwin University. During the seven years she lived in the Northern Territory, she was employed by two independent Indigenout education providers - the Institute for Aboriginal Development and Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education - as a tutor, lecturer and oral historian. From 1999 to 2003 she coordinated Batchelor Institute's inaugural creative writing program in Alice Springs. She continues her involvement with Indigenous writers and writing in Central Australia. The Versatile Man is her latest co-authored work; the next will be a biography of senior Anmatyerr woman, Rosalie Kunoth Monks.

Bibliographic information